ENLIGHTENING the BRITISH Knowledge, Discovery and the Museum in the Eighteenth Century
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
ENLIGHTENING THE BRITISH Knowledge, discovery and the museum in the eighteenth century edited by R.G.W. Anderson, Ml. Caygill, A.G. MacGregor and L Syson THE BRITISH MUSEUM PRESS Contents List of illustrations page vii Notes on the contributors ix Introduction 1 Robert Anderson 1 Anticipating the Enlightenment: Museums and galleries in Britain before the British Museum 5 Giles Waterfield 2 Sir Hans Sloane and the European Proto-Museum 11 DeboraJ. Meijers 3 From Private Collection to Public Museum: The Sloane collection at Chelsea and the British Museum in Montagu House 18 Marjorie L Caygill 4 Encyclopaedic Collectors: Ephraim Chambers and Sir Hans Sloane 29 Richard Yeo 5 Wantonness and Use: Ambitions for research libraries in early eighteenth-century England 37 David McKitterick 6 Paper Monuments and Learned Societies: Hooke's Royal Society Repository 49 Lisajardine 7 The Status of Instruments in Eighteenth-Century Cabinets 55 Robert Anderson 8 'Utile et Dulce': Applying knowledge at the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce 62 Celina Fox 9 Wedgwood and his Artists 68 David Bindman 10 Skulls, Mummies and Unicorns' Horns: Medicinal chemistry in early English museums 74 Ken Arnold * 11 Natural History in Eighteenth-Century Museums in Britain 81 HughS. Torrens 12 Linnaeus, Solander and the Birth of a Global Plant Taxonomy 92 Bengtjonsell 13 Joseph Banks, the British Museum and Collections in the Age of Empire 99 Neil Chambers 14 'Ethnography'in the Enlightenment 114 John Mack 15 European Responses to the Sacred Art of India 119 Partha Mitter 16 Dr Richard Mead (1673-1754) and his Circle 127 Ian Jenkins 17 The Rise and Decline of English Neoclassicism 136 Joseph M. Levine 18 Bodies of Enlightenment: Sculpture and the eighteenth-century museum 142 Malcolm Baker 19 Napoleon and Egyptology: Britain's debt to French enterprise 149 T.C.H.James 20 Martin Folkes and the Study of the English Coinage in the Eighteenth Century 158 Hugh Pagan 21 The Antiquary en plein air: Eighteenth-century progress from topographical survey to the threshold of field archaeology 164 Arthur MacCregor 22 Record and Reverie: Representing British antiquity in the eighteenth century 176 Sam Smiles Afterword 185 Keith Thomas Index 187.